El Regreso

I must admit throughout the trip I was arbitrarily considering how my feelings would turn out once it was time to depart this culture I had so heavily probed with all my energy. If I was going to be here for 28 days, by God, I was going to entice every last mystery I could to come my way while there. Oddly enough, the day had come. And my feelings were not left deprived.

I ended classes and had my finals on a Wednesday. Mind you, I had a three hour, essay final-- three hours of nothing but writing. Nothing unusual to expect, however, one hour and half through the exam, I had to pee. I mean PEE. I looked at my professor to ask if I could use the restroom and she tightly pursed her lips and mouthed: "This is a final: Turn in your test or you can't leave." I just about shriveled to pieces when I made sense of her words. Did she not know I had urinary retention problems? Now my professor was one incredible, knowledgeable woman. In this instance though, she impaled me with her merciless demeanor. Waiting sweet precious time for my mind to produce material worthy enough to be written, my bladder pulsated within me. I could think nothing other than I was going to burst. I spent the rest of my exam unenthusiastically moving about throughout the room as I reformed my body into oddly shaped positions to ease my disconfort. I was too stubborn to give in my paper unless it be submitted with the most imppeccable substance worthy to reflect my name. Pride was warring against my body. And Dr. Mccard, nonetheless, was slightly entertained by very own agony. Once I arrived back at the cabins, I had to change my pants. You can decipher whether my bulheadedness or my dear bladder took home the prize of sweet victory.

After finals we were off to Santiago, the capital of Chile, for about a week. I was ecstatic: no work to have to finish, a new city to pioneer, and days of being able to absorb the whereabouts and people I was with. About two weeks into the trip, a countless number of the students on our program were getting sick, very SICK. I saw to it that my education in nursing would somehow authorize me "Captain Nurse" while there, SO I saw it befitting to purchase a load of Vitamin C to boost the immune system and cough suppressants to cease the spread of it all over. Daniela the Duck (my small, yet proficient thermometer) was in action a lot. People were coming down like flies with the colds and fevers. I was grateful to the Lord for his protection at the time so that me and my roomate (also studying to be nurse) could help out. Throughout that whole time, I felt less of a nurse as I did a mother. It was a foreign feeling to me. I immediatley felt the "baby yearnings", and quickly repressed the thoughts. Moreorless, the sickness caught up to me, right when we reached Santiago. More than a trucker getting hit by a 18-wheeler after he had just puked up McDonalads---I had felt worse, and the sinus pressure thickened my head out to feel the size of a balloon. But again, that faithful stubbornness of mine stood rampant. I was still going to go out every night and experience Santiago until my body decided to follow in obedience to my will. And so, I did.

On Sunday I made the wise decision to go up about 11,000 m in elevation to experience skiing in the Andes. Fresh, fluffed snow. People from all over the world. And I had but one goal: ONE time down any of the slopes without falling. Didn't matter which one: JUST one. Sad enough to confess that while weaving down an intermediate slope I saw, no joke, a three-year old, fly passed me. I fell, drastically hard, not out of mistake in direction, but of pure bewilderment of the skill of a child at that age. Unbelievable, I thought. All in all, I had the time of my life there.

My adventures day and night ultimately, and unremittingly, brought on its consequences. On the 10 hour flight back home, I held a four hour conversation with a Chilean woman about Chilean and US politics while intermittently shoving my head between my legs in sheer pain. Not to mention when hearing me cough as I sat down next to her, she unnoticingly brought out her face mask and covered herself. I chuckled, it was a comical in my eyes. But the last hour of the plane ride, I busted it like a baby- tears and tears flooded my face as I sat in misery while I asked God to either make the pressure in my head cease, or let my head fall off. I didn't care which--the pain was unbearable. I am just now beginning to feel a hint of restoration take over my body. Thank you God for your healing touch. Beth, dumb decisions (but undeniably worth the pain).

I can say, though, that the most beautiful aspect of the trip was that what I had anticipated to be the most "exciting" and "thrilling" like the salsaing, the skiiing, the studying of Neruda's poetry, the touring all over the country land, were, nonetheless, exhiliarating activities.

And yet, how could the very blood of my being be so floored at the sweet times of conversations with the maids? When the older maid told me of her husband dying of cancer a few months ago? Or the time when Audrey and I finshed our meals and left, to see a man come by and scrape our nothingness of chicken bones into a bag to savor for later? And what about the bonding of a US sister to another Chilean sister in Christ through the mere playings of a game of soccer? Or the reality of conversation that came to the table when vulnerability consumed the air as atheists and Christians openly discussed?? OR how about being in La Serena for 3 weeks and then coming to find out that an orphanage with 150 precious kids lied approximately 300 yards from where we were staying? And THOSE kids, oh those kids...

I wanted to activate the living words: "For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; a stranger, and you invited me in; naked, and you clothed me; sick, and you tended to me; I was in prison, and you came to visit me."

The only worthwhile pleasure existed at the deepened, core being of the renewed blood of Jesus. Witnessing and knowing the power of His freedom for His beloved. He has liberated my blood to rage and move in a rhythm for others. I didn't have to go to another country to find that out, God just happened to silently whisper it deep within my soul.